I am sure this has been discussed but I didn't want to necro any threads.
As of late, it seems that RNG has been a core element in a lot of MMORPG gameplay and the most notorious one is WoW. I also want to convey that RNG should exist but the weight in which it does shouldn't be as heavy for specific things.
I believe RNG weight should be light for any sort of damage/healing output or mitigation input and that your core damage or healing shouldn't be dependent on RNG.
RNG for this should be an additional bonus instead. Like others, I think having more control over your class in combat provides a better fluid experience and creates better gameplay. In essence it can set apart good from bad players. From what I understand is that RNG for this sort of thing will be weighted pretty light in Pantheon as an additional bonus instead of core? Is this correct from what we know so far?
RNG weight for item drops should be moderately to high especially if you farm them. I am going to confidently assume that specific items drop from specific Named NPCs and you won't get a random loot drop at the end of the dungeon. Essentially like in Everquest and not in WoW where you get random items you may not even need or want after completing said content. Am I assuming correctly here?
We simply don't have information on drops or the like. These forums have massive debates about virtually everything. They won't commit to anything in particular about the drops from what I have seen.
I am firmly on the side of magic items should actually be rare and should never be trash drops to vendor. I don't care what anyone says, when a giant rat drops a great sword the game loses all verisimilitude.
As for average healing/damage it is in the same boat of we currently don't know. Many of the skills and abilities have not even been created yet and of those that have the public doesn't get to see them nor how they would work internally.
I am fine with RNG as long as people have options. There is always a minimum, a maximum, and an average to RNG damage/healing. Take things like lightning damage in Diablo. You would have a range between 1 say 1000 for the damage. Everyone clearly saw that is how lightning worked. Anyone can instantly see the average damage without doing any real math. Long term it averaged out to be great but in the moment you may be unlucky or amazing. One target may die in 3 hits where the other would die in 14 due to bad luck. It was a part of what you signed on for to use that element. As long as it is made clear what you are getting in for RNG can be tons of fun.
You know someone made their day seeing a max damage crit and similiarly when you see the strongest lightning wizard on the server crit for 3 damage due to RNG it is a laughable moment. I am a bigger fan of taking options like 7d6 rather than 1d50 precicely because it is more predictable. I would know the swingy one is obviously more DPS long term, but some fights you may be horrible where some fights you may be sitting at the top of the parse. It is all part of what makes players/builds/etc unique. I want there to be differences between spells beyond the type of damage.
Pantheon follows in the footsteps of EQ which was largely based on D&D rules. While Pantheon doesn't follow the same ruleset as D&D, per se, the base appears to be similar. The RNG involved generally doesn't have to do with how much you hit / heal for at base. Rather it is 1) If your skill or spell was successful and / or 2) if your skill / spell hits your target. With something like a heal it's just if your spell succeeds in casting. With something like the swing of your sword, it would just determine if you hit. For damage spells it might be both.
When it comes to loot, there should be a random element. Killing X thing and automatically getting Y thing is kinda boring. With something like harvesting, not having some variation or the ability to get something rare just feels like work.
I am a big fan of dynamic gameplay outside of character interaction and loot too. If it were to be done in Pantheon I'd want to see it done cautiously. I don't know all the reasons EQN failed but I believe one of them was that they weren't really able to realize their vision of a living world. Trying to do too much in that regard could cause more harm than good.
That said, there are things I would be interested in seeing:
Zone events. These wouldn't replace GM events as I think those are great one-offs. They shouldn't be predictable or too frequent and highly disruptive ones should be extremely rare. But having zones not be fully static is a great way to keep things interesting. They could be small things, like X resource spawning more plentifully for a duration, or big things like hill giants attacking. Pantheon is being built as a social MMO and, in my opinion, events are a great way to draw the community together occasionally. However, it can't be over-done. Once events become commonplace people stop caring about them as much.
Random rare spawns. I like rare spawns in general, but they are typically static in order to ensure that their loot items aren't too easy to get. However, a handful of NPCs that could spawn anywhere in the world wouldn't hurt too much. It doesn't have to be a monster either.. maybe a vendor who is the only source of something or a harvesting node that has something extremely rare. A chance at a random spawn like that would drive world exploration and could even tie into the perception system.
Procedurally generated zone(s). This wouldn't be across the board, obviously, and would likely need to be something introduced after launch. However, I always thought it would be cool to have a zone that is procedurally generated every time the server resets (patch days, for instance). The boss room / fight would always be the same for tuning and balancing but the way to get there would change week to week. This would make good end-game content, as re-discovering the zone and dealing with any new challenges presented would help to keep things fresh.
Jobeson said:I think procedurally generated zones would be against their pledge for the open world game. They may one day flip on their instancing stance, but I imagine that is only if they make raiding the #1 thing in pantheon.
In my vision of it, the zone or zones would not be instanced. It would be an open zone, accessible by everyone that meets whatever criteria required (level, keying, acclimations, etc). Whenever the server restarts the zone would be procedurally generated and be "permanent" until the next server restart (with maybe some failsafes to prevent it from regenerating during emergency maintenance / crashes).
People love to hate RNG but it is rather essential to maintain interest. To keep killing the same thing in the same way somewhat different each time.
The Dungeons & Dragons system - and later Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - was popular because it worked. You knew what you were trying. The mob knew what it was trying. But only the Gods, the dice and the dungeon master could determine what actually happened.
Things like an insect dropping a two-handed sword +1 are ridiculous but that is a function of a ridiculous loot table not the concept of RNG.
Because of the pacing of D&D the tension of every roll is felt. And when you fail that save, or miss that attack roll you feel it deeply. Conversely, when you try that gambit and it lands you feel ecstatic. A few weeks ago we had a level 13 cleric manage to down a dragon with his Divine Intervention ability. The odds were low that it would work, he needed to roll a 13 or less on a percentile dice (d100). He rolled a thirteen exactly and the entire party exploded in excitement, it was one of those memories that stick with you.
That is to say, I don't think you should be able to predict whether a specific hit will land or be a crit. You shouldn't be able to predict the specific damage of a strike. Over time, all of these numbers are predictable with statistics, but the unpredictability of each individual attack keeps the tension ratcheted up. It makes you weigh your choices before you take your chances. You see that mob looking very bloodied, maybe you could take him down with one more hit. But your hits haven't been landing consistently because of its formidable AC? Instead, should you expend that spell slot? And if you do, you don't know what is coming in the next round or in the next room and you can't get that spell slot back without a rest.
My story is that I probably played a dozen MMORPGs from 0 to max (EQ wasn't one of them, I was an EQ2 player) before I ever played D&D so I really didn't fully appreciate what Pantheon is trying to accomplish with the slower pacing and limited action bar. RNG along with Pantheon's pacing and systems are designed to ratchet up the tension. It makes the highs extremely high and the lows very low. On the tangent of limited action bar, there is nothing more devastating than not preparing the exact spell that you needed as a cleric. Or preparing a spell thinking it would be perfect for the dungeon you are heading into and not needing it. Conversely the high you feel after picking the perfect spell list and having the spell that you don't normally prepare pull your party out of a bad spot is exhillerating.
I guess I strayed pretty far from the RNG (dice roll) question. But I wanted to draw all of the parrallels (or at least several of them) to describe how they work together to create tension, high highs and low lows, which in turn create memories.
dorotea said:Things like an insect dropping a two-handed sword +1 are ridiculous but that is a function of a ridiculous loot table not the concept of RNG.
Yeah the two main RNGs being discussed in the thread to confuse everyone. RNG loot table and RNG damage/healing. I hope they give damage types different themes with RNG ranges/reliability, accuracy, cast speed, etc rather than build the spell mechanics then pick a damage type for the spell effect.
Eronakis said:I believe RNG weight should be light for any sort of damage/healing output or mitigation input and that your core damage or healing shouldn't be dependent on RNG.
Depending on what your definition of "light" is, I disagree with this. One hit is not the same as the next hit or the next hit. While you might hit the mob 5 times, two or three of those 5 hits might not have been good hits, one might have been average, and the last you felt a good connection. The range of what is low vs high might be shored up by ones attack rating vs the mobs defenses but I'd still expect there to be a notable difference between hits, not having most just land for a specific number.